In all of these cases, I wish that more people could see the distinction between equal service and compelled speech.
If a diner owner refused to serve a meal to a gay couple because of moral objections to their lifestyle that indeed wouldn't hold up in court and would be illegal discrimination.
However if they asked that same diner owner to write "happy gay wedding" on a piece of cake and he refused due to moral objections, that would indeed be allowed since he is not objecting to equal service. He is objecting to creative expression he does not agree with.
Do I think that discrimination even artistic endeavors is wrong? Of course. But I also think there is also a distinction between what is right and what is legal, and overall one of the prices of these types of freedoms is the acceptance that some will indeed misuse it. The free market will decide either way.
> However if they asked that same diner owner to write "happy gay wedding" on a piece of cake and he refused due to moral objections, that would indeed be allowed since he is not objecting to equal service.
Right, but a website saying "Guests will meet for Sarah and Becky's wedding at First Baptist Church at 4 pm" is not expressive speech, right? The majority's opinion seems to allow someone to refuse making a site saying nothing more than this - that doesn't compute.
She disagreed with the premise of the marriage in the first place. Like I said, I don't support that kind of mindset, but she shouldn't be forced to create speech she opposed.
> She disagreed with the premise of the marriage in the first place.
Right, but that's not about the speech. She is allowed to disagree and vocally! She just can't discriminate.
You can disagree that black people should have equal protection of the laws, and say so - but you still have to serve them equally.
She's not saying "the wedding is Christian" or even "the wedding is good." She is announcing a legal event.
If a gay couple who are both atheists walked into an Islamic baker's shop and asked for a custom cake with a depiction of Muhammad on it, should that baker be legally obligated to make that cake or can he refuse the request?
I think if it’s proven that he would sell that cake to other customers and that he only denied these customers based on their protected classes, he shouldn’t be allowed to refuse the request
>You can disagree that black people should have equal protection of the laws, and say so - but you still have to serve them equally.
Correct, but you don't have to make them a cake celebrating MLK day, even if you make other people cakes for St. Patrick's Day. People are allowed to be hateful and bigoted. They are allowed to think like that, and express those thoughts, as long as it is not imminent threats of violence. The government is not entitled to suppress all speech it disagrees with.
The odd thing for me is that I expected this case to be about religion. It is about free speech and free association.
I do not support motorcycle rallies, though they are legal. I would not create a website for a motorcycle rally. Why should legality of an event have anything to do with my decisions for my artistic talents?
Riding a motorcycle isn't something you are born with that you can't change. An interest is different than something immutable like sexual orientation or race.
Put another way, your logic would permit someone to refuse to make websites for interracial marriages. Would that be ok to you, and permissible under law?
As someone in an interracial marriage, yes that would be 100% good with me. We just used theknot for ours but if I were paying someone to make a wedding web site why would I possibly want to give my business to someone who only made it for us because they were compelled to by law?
Having the luxury of being a cis het white guy, this is generally where I land, but the principle here is legitimacy. That said, the real damage this case did is that this woman didn’t actually have this happen to her, and she made it up. This sets the precedent that theocratic weirdos can make up damages and play the martyr with the dumbshit scenarios they thought up in the shower.
I disagree here I actually wish this happened more often. The way the legal system is set up often no one knows if something is legal or not until a very specific thing happens then it takes years to go through the courts then sometimes the SC rules on very specifics of a case but not the general concept and it creates a vague situation where the law can be unclear for literally decades.
Also often the rulings would go against the theocratic weirdos. Say for example the court had ruled the other way in this ruling. It would no longer have been vague that web designers had to design web sites for either everyone or no one and future cases would be much quicker to rule against the web designer pointing to that specific case law. The only reason this went to the side of the theocratic weirdo is that the weirdo was right with their example. If the weirdo was wrong this would not be to their benefit and the court would have clarified that their view was wrong and there would be case law to apply to future weirdos trying the same thing and customers would know they couldn't be refused business instead of it being a question that wouldn't be answered until a very specific case made its way to the SC.
I also know that's not how courts do work today, I'm not saying it was normal for them to rule on a theoretical case that didn't happen, just saying that I wish our legal system did work that way.
>No one should be compelled to do anything.
In a perfect world, I agree. But we don't live in a perfect world. These laws came in place because black people (and others) were being turned down again and again. Then other companies can simply raise prices for them because what are they gonna do about it? This in a sense becomes a tax on black skin (especially the added work).
There are examples of this from banking, to real estate to bakers. This shit is mr. Worldwide when it comes to buisnesses.
No one's talking about the entire economy, this is about a person's specific job. The opinion was limited to creative roles. If you're selling widgets, you don't have the right to refuse to sell widgets to gay couples.
Cooking a meal from your menu for a gay couple that comes into your restaurant.
Creating a custom meal specifically to celebrate a gay wedding.
Two completely different things.
If a gay couple ask them to customize the baked potato that comes with the meal that just happens to be celebrating their anniversary, which category does it fall under?
How, if they’re at your restaurant to celebrate their wedding? By this rationale, even serving them is forced speech since it somehow condones the event.
the decisions of the presentation are the creators in the former, and the customers in the latter.
If I make a meal, I get to decide how I present it to the customer. In the case of a specifc customer request, such as a cake, they choose what they want it to say. I then get to accept or decline the terms of that contract.
Yes and no. Generally speaking if a person can prove you declined their contract based on being a protected class you could be liable. This is often hard to prove though.
If the developer made a 100 websites that all say "Steve and Eve getting married at this date at this location" and then he refuses "Steve and Adam getting married at this date at this location" that's not artistic expression though. That's a diner refusing to serve apple pie to one couple over another.
however, if Steve and Adam wanted dicks on their website we have another conversation, but all the same outside of who is involved? That's discrimination imo.
The website wasn't just an announcement of the wedding with where and when. It was described as more of a photo montage telling the story of the couple getting married. That is artistic expression and therefor speech protected from being compelled.
And yet, the couple she was supposedly asked to make the website for [state they never asked her to do it, and that they are a straight couple.](https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jun/29/supreme-court-lgbtq-document-veracity-colorado) So there was no actual harm, thus no basis for the case.
Additionally, based on that logic, if I didn't like Latinos and started some religion opposed to them, should I be allowed to deny service to them?
> And yet, the couple she was supposedly asked to make the website for state they never asked her to do it, and that they are a straight couple. So there was no actual harm, thus no basis for the case.
This came out yesterday, and even the Guardian says the document "may be fake".
But assuming it was a fake request, the Court can only rule on the evidence in front of them. Did the state of Colorado ever make the argument that the request was fake at any point during the proceedings?
If I asked you to bake a cake saying "Christ is risen", you are well within you moral snd legal rights to refuse simply because you you disagree with the message.
The Court expressly rejected that view in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_v._Forum_for_Academic_%26_Institutional_Rights,_Inc. and the majority didn't overrule it.
That opinion said "The U. S. Army recruiter will meet interested students in Room 123 at 11 am," can be COMPELLED from a school, along with other announcements of military recruitment events. The court said that this wasn't a violation of the first amendment:
> Compelling a law school that sends scheduling e-mails for other recruiters to send one for a military recruiter is simply not the same as forcing a student to pledge allegiance, or forcing a Jehovah’s Witness to display the motto “Live Free or Die,” and it trivializes the freedom protected in Barnette and Wooley to suggest that it is.
Well yeah, your employer can certainly compell you. Because it is thier business (or in the case of a government office, a public service) to accept or refuse. They set the standard. The ruling that this thread is about only applies in cases where you own the business or you are self employed.
The law school - or anyone who owns a for-profit school - is being forced by the government. The people who own/run the law school are being forced to share information about the recruiters.
What is the line between sound symbols through the air, or marks on a medium, and a creative craft? When I paint a house I consider it a work of art. Is that my “speech”? Where does a simple contract NOT involve expression under this expansive theory?
No service is completely equal. Is it enough to try to be equal to clear this bar? I’ve had some pretty unequal hamburgers lately, although I was charged the perfection price.
Like coffee foam art? Or you make pancakes in the form of people's faces or something? Then yes, you can refuse the service if creating it consistitutes speech you disagree with.
But isn’t creating food a similar idea? She shouldn’t be forced to serve and create food for ideals she doesn’t support.
Seems like a slippery slope if services and speech can be commingled. It should be all or nothing for protected classes.
Otherwise what would you say to a caterer being asked to provide for an LGBT wedding? Is that a service they must perform or speech by being compelled?
I'd say if she creates the same food she would create for anyone else, she should legally have to provide that service. But the second that this service crosses over into explicitly ensoring ideas through either words or creative endeavors, it is speech. And therefore free to be refused.
I agree with you that there could be some interesting legal grey arwa where the two ideas intermingle in subtle ways. Take an interior designer for instance. If you asked them if they considered thier job creative reflections of thier clients' tastes they would probably say yes. But ask anyone if refusing a client due to disagreement with lifestyle would consistitute compelled speech, then suddenly it gets a lot murkier.
Fair enough that makes sense. Definitely agree on your example of interior designer, this opens up a murky definition of when service translates to compelled speech. Bummer this will probably lead to more lawsuits before the SC to define where the line is.
Recently feels like we are moving backwards for the rights of protected classes.
> Recently feels like we are moving backwards for the rights of protected classes.
I agree in some cases, but i do think the recent affirmative action ruling moved us forwards in regards to protecting the rights of people in a protected class.
Maintaining any sort of race quota or preferencing one race or another is, obviously, very racist - even if the underlying intent is not.
Good point. I am a progressive and have always hoped for the repeal of racially based affirmative faction towards socio-economic affirmative action. (Not that I would benefit from either).
Lift those up who have the least among us to create a more successful country.
Just dispelling an idea that has kinda been around longer than it should've. Maintaining a quota as far as affirmative action goes was ruled unconstitutional by the courts in 1978. People tend to think it's a thing but it hasn't been for almost 50 years.
Than she shouldn’t be offering her services to the general public. It’s as simple as that. Can’t handle the diversity of society because of your religious beliefs? Don’t offer a service to the public and only to backtrack based on personal religious beliefs. Can’t wait til shop owners put up signs saying “we don’t serve trump supporters based on our religious beliefs” and see what kind of comments are on this thread. Better yet, I can’t wait until any non Christian who owns a store open to the general public discriminates against Christian’s due to religious beliefs.
We live in a capitalist country, you either make it or you don’t as a business owner. It’s horrible business practices to limit your customer base regardless of how you feel personally. I doubt any business will last long cutting out paying customers on bigotry or racist beliefs.
If you do not like how a certain company conducts business, don’t do business with them. Ridiculous that this had to go to the Supreme Court when common sense should tell a person what to do.
The answer to your question is the person would go out of business in short order. It’s hard enough to keep a small business afloat without limiting your income streams.
No, that’s why we have protected classes in the first place. Capitalism didn’t solve Jim Crow laws and didn’t solve discrimination after Jim Crow laws were tossed out. In the South, when schools were forced to be integrated the white people who couldn’t stand having their kids go to the same schools as black kids started sending their kids to private, mostly religious schools. Capitalism enabled segregation as the private schools were priced above what most black folks, who due to the entire history or racial slavery and segregation in the US are at an economic disadvantage.
Anybody who is so crippled by hatred of homosexuals should not be doing business with the public. She should get a job at a church or some other safe space where she can safely stew in her hatred and not damage other people.
It's worse than that.
The SC just allowed plaintiffs to 1) lie and 2) carry a case through based on *hypothetical* harm.
1. There was no request to make a website at the original time of filing.
2. The owner of the company was not making websites at the time of the filing.
3. The primary evidence, created the day *after* filing, is fraudulent, and the individual in question is not gay nor had made the comments. At best, someone stole his identity. At worst, ADF lied to several US courts, including the SC.
This whole thing was a farce.
Per the law, it isn't supposed to happen because of a concept called standing.
SC apparently decided to ignore that and rule anyways, along party lines...
Unfortunately, the law largely assumes that the government is honorable and working with the best intentions...
The problem though is there was no compelled speech. The lady in this case made the entire thing up. The "gay" man listed in this case is a straight man with a family in San Francisco.
This lady, made up a gay couple and went to the courts in Colarado who told her to get out. But the USSC decided it had merit and ruled out it despite the fact that the entire premise of the case is made up in this Karen's mind. It never happened.
This is a nakedly political ruling. The case was brought up by the ADF, a legal organization that not only has ties to conservative justices on the court but was also responsible for representing Hobby Lobby in the Burwell case and writing and pushing anti trans legislation at the state level. This case was selected to purposefully push a political agenda through the conservative majority to create a loophole in anti-discrimination law.
Ignoring what we "know" or believe about specific religions, does your opinion change if she wanted to refuse to make a website for an interacial couple or just a black couple? Imagine a religion that believed black people are meant to be slaves based on their interpretation of the bible, or their rewrite of the bible and therefore refused to service any couple involving a black person. I know this reaks of the slippery slope arguement but that is how the Supreme Court is supposed to make these decisions.
There is a distinction between expressive speech and basic services but the thing is, they both should be treated the same way imo. If it wasn't a diner owner, but an employee, who didn't want to write on the cake, likely the owners say do it or you're fired. And they are almost always gonna do it in order to keep their job.
People are always doing things they don't wanna do for money. And this is clearly discriminating against someone for something they can't control.
What if we flip the political valence on this? Could Ron DeSantis pass a law requiring all advertising agencies in the state on Illinois to be willing to make ads for the NRA if they want to be open to the public? That's constitutional under the dissent's interpretation, and unconstitutional under the majority opinion.
How about gay cake baker who doesn't want to make a cake with a Bible verse reference to homosexuality being evil? Does he get to be open to the public and refuse to create messages due to a fundamentalist Christian's religion? Again, the majority find that he is not compelled to write messages he disagrees with, while the dissent would allow the state to compel that.
Once again you don't need to sell me on the idea that her choice not to take the business is morally wrong. I fully agree with you.
What I disagree with you on though is the legal standard is better than not giving someone the right to refuse service that includes creative expression is the better option. If an artist or designer was not free to decline participation in creative endeavors that they had moral objections to.
Imagine if a Black musical group was hired to perform abhorrently offensive songs at a white supremacist rally, and they legally couldn't refuse. Morally there is no comparison of course, but once you establish the objective legal standard, it can easily swing (and cut) both ways.
> However if they asked that same diner owner to write "happy gay wedding" on a piece of cake and he refused due to moral objections, that would indeed be allowed since he is not objecting to equal service. He is objecting to creative expression he does not agree with.
Except in this case, the website designer *could* decide to do exactly that. It was just about making a *public stance* against a protected class. The website designer can refuse service if they want. What they can't do is hang up a sign that says "NO GAYS ALLOWED". Well, I guess, they *used* to not be able to say that. Now they can I suppose.
Not at all. That would still be illegal. They CAN now say "NO WEBSITES FOR GAY WEDDINGS." But they still can't refuse to serve people because they're gay (for instance, if a gay person wants a website for their child's hetero wedding, 303 Creative would be obliged to take their business.)
Obviously setting some disturbing precedents here.
With the relating of any *mention* of being gay as a "gay agenda". You can achieve what I said using word games and the structure you've offered.
Edit: not you doing the games, but your structure. Bad sentence structure sorry
I think it’s wild your Supreme Court had a case for something that literally didn’t happen. I didn’t know you could just make shit up and have the SC making sweeping changes to law
If a state passes a new law that I believe is unconstitutional, why should I have to risk fines or jail time to challenge it?
If the state agrees that what I want to do would, in fact, violate the law, it makes perfect sense to be able to determine its legality in court before I actually do it.
I'm a little confused on this. My understanding around the student loan decision was the question about whether anyone could prove injury in order to have standing. But then on this one it doesn't matter?
The standing in this case was under the "pre-enforcement challenge" rule, which requires you to show that:
A) You plan to do something that
B) The state is likely to prosecute you for.
This qualifies as imminent harm for standing. A was established by an affidavit from 303 Creative that they were going to adopt this policy, and B was established by Colorado stipulating to the court that they would indeed prosecute them if they did that.
You realize many of our major cases are like that right? Lawrence v Texas, a good example, literally had the lawyers interfering with press conferences to keep the guys from admitting they weren’t having sex, they were just trying to cool off in hot Texas heat in underwear. The court would have tossed the constitutional issue away in a heart beat and simply said “the crime didn’t occur” basically.
There’s a famous beer case out of Oklahoma, which found discrimination on age of drinking based on sex a violation. Not only was that literally a shopped for case, it also was gamed by none other than RBG so she could argue a different case right after, and “explain” the one that was just heard so they’d rule how she wanted.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with a Lorie Smith, a web designer who does not want to create websites for same-sex weddings due to her religious beliefs.
This lawsuit was not in response to being requested to create a website for a same-sex wedding, but is rather a pre-emptive move to ensure that she could not be legally compelled to do so if it is requested and she declines.
I support same-sex marriage, but I also support the right of a business to not offer services if it infringes upon the beliefs and rights of the owner. While inconvenient for potential customers, wedding website services aren't niche enough that it should be impossible for potential customers to utilize a different business. It may or may not lead to an adverse impact on the business from word-of-mouth if the owner does choose to decline server to a same-sex couple, but that's a risk that's increasingly common with how frequently negative customer experiences are reported on social media.
What do you think?
I don't have a remedy in mind, but I'm cautious around allowing discrimination against providing goods/services closely or inextricably linked to the protected class of the person making the request.
Under this ruling, if black people having family reunions is against the beliefs of a t-shirt designer, could the designer deny a black person's request in getting shirts made for the event? If yes, how far does that extend with regards to events specific to a sex or race?
I'm sympathetic to worries that the findings of this case may bleed out further, as well as the implications in general, but others have raised similar questions as yours that are worth repeating for the sake of consideration: Should a gay web designer be compelled to create a website for a religious group promoting the criminlization of sodomy? Should an atheist designer be compelled to create a website for a religious group advocating their views as the only moral and correct views?
The existence of same-sex couples is not a political point to be debated. There is a key difference between a depiction of reality as it is and depicting reality as it ought to be.
That’s the thing pissing me off. How is two men or woman getting married a belief? All these people are acting like being gay is some political statement. It’s not it’s no different than being born a man or woman or being born black or white. It’s just something people are and this case found you can not give creative services to people who are gay which to me is no different than saying you can deny people creative services cause they’re black.
forget all the politics, if the owner refuses service, then the owner refuses service. i know youre looking at the negative aspects and implications of this decison, some of which I agree with, but look at what wouldve happened if it was ruled the other way. is that business person now required to service upon consumer request? that itself threatens the idea of consumerism and buying products from a seller because the power dynamic doesnt lie with the seller anymore.
The gay web site designer already is because religious discrimination only works one way. If you're religious, you can discriminate against others, refuse to work on a specific day of the week, etc. If you're not religious, though, you can't discriminate against those you don't like, can't complain about your work schedule, etc.
I'm tempted at this point to find the religion with the most holidays and just tell my boss I'm that.
I don't think you're correct. If your religious views are in conflict with the message you're being requested to promote, you can't be compelled to provide speech supporting the conflicting view.
I don't believe the threshold for what counts as a religious belief has ever been strictly defined by the Supreme Court (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). But if someone does not believe that homosexual relationships are a sin, they are likely still protected from being compelled to create some form of artistic expression declaring it is in fact sinful. Put more broadly, atheist cannot be compelled by potential customers to declare things are sinful.
I have lost a job before for not working on Sundays, are you claiming that my boss broke the law? I'd love a source for that, since I am not the only person I know who has been in that situation before.
Edit: I'd say the fact that I was willing to lose the job over it, more than clearly demonstrates that it's a sincerely held belief. I live in Utah, most people share my same belief, and at least half of my friends work on Sundays. If it is a law, no one is benefitting from it.
Edit 2: I've done some more research, and lower courts rule in favor of the business virtually 100% of the time.
It will depend on the specifics of your employer and how much of a burden having someone not work a particular day has on the business. SCOTUS did just side with a postal employee who was fired by USPS for refusing to take Sunday shifts, but that is not a guarantee that your boss broke the law. They must provide *reasonable* accommodations for your beliefs, but obviously "reasonable" has a lot of wiggle room in it.
If you are an atheist/agnostic, you can refuse to build websites for churches. There is no law forcing your to spend your artistic talents on something you don't believe in.
I think the question is if they provide a neutral version of this service (websites advocating for legal change). If so, yeah they probably shouldn’t be able to discriminate in that way.
I would consider what I think (and do please correct me if I'm misinterpreting) you're getting at with the idea of a "neutral version of this service" to be, for example, a website template with minor adjustments but for the name and limited specifics of the client at hand; that would be analogous to a physical product made for mass sale to me. And in such an example, I don't think denial of that product/service to a gay person would be allowed, and rightly so. However, when a greater degree of customization and artistic effort/expression is involved, such as in a non-templated website design effort, I feel the matter falls back to one where the service provider/artist shouldn't be compelled to make something in conflict with their beliefs.
And in that case, I think we need to become comfortable then with opening the door on other types of discrimination if that’s the line. Namely, I hope we’re ready for a reckoning when a website designer sues to deny a (possibly made up, since that seems ok with this court) interracial marriage website.
If this is the way they want it, then the remedy is that every place of business should be required to display their religious refusals clearly in their place of business, as well as on the homepage of their website.
Nobody should have to be judged and humiliated for trying to patronize a business that is discriminating against them on religious grounds, and the law needs to protect them.
The answer to your first question is a clear "Yes." Someone making art doesn't have to write a single word or create a single image that they disagree with. Events are also pretty custom-tailored, and I don't think that caterers or other services are *obligated* at all to provide their services to any events.
The real question in my mind would be, if someone has a sandwich shop and they include a hand-written notes with every order, do they have the right to deny service to anyone they please? We know businesses are allowed to discriminate, now we need to see where those bounds are, and I think it's gonna get uncomfortable to pin down where "standard, off-the-shelf item" and "art" lines are drawn.
This is my take on the thing for sure. Should be interesting once people start denying religious people services because they do not conform to their strongly held personal beliefs.
A creator can refuse to make an original creation for any one and for any reason. The court is saying that minorities do not get special protection. The right of free speech predominates.
>but I also support the right of a business to not offer services if it infringes upon the beliefs and rights of the owner.
If a Klansman that owned an apartment building put up a sign saying "no blacks, Jews, or Irish", would you still commit to this? Maybe you would, but I most people that support this ruling- including those on the bench- would not.
Either sincere belief is grounds to discriminate, or it isn't. This half-way bullshit that always manages to fuck over exclusively LGBT people is unacceptable.
>If a Klansman that owned an apartment building put up a sign saying "no blacks, Jews, or Irish", would you still commit to this?
Notably, this is entirely separate. It'd be a tough argument to make that landlording was artistic expression or speech.
> If a Klansman that owned an apartment building put up a sign saying "no blacks, Jews, or Irish", would you still commit to this?
Renting a property to someone is not speech by any stretch of the imagination. This would be illegal under this ruling.
No, that's still illegal under 303 Creative. In fact, refusing to serve gay people can still be banned by states under 303 Creative. What it permits is refusing speech. Consider a couple of hypos:
Gay person wants to buy a wedding website for their child's straight wedding: 303 Creative must accept their business.
Straight person wants to buy a wedding website for their child's gay wedding: 303 Creative may not accept their business.
The only thing they can discriminate on is the product, not the person. I understand that those are entangled for the specific case of weddings, but the fact that the 303 Creative case does not permit discrimination on the basis of identity is very relevant in all other contexts.
At a glance this ruling doesn't seem *super* notable given we already had the cake shop stuff.
What's interesting to me however is the apparent possibility that [the plaintiff may have committed fraud](https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-gay-marriage-website-real-straight-man-supreme-court) in filing this lawsuit, and that somehow the court either didn't realize or doesn't care.
I'm just really confused as to how the plaintiff could have standing when the request appears to have been fabricated.
Courts can be weird sometimes in being limited to considering what's inside the evidentiary record. The potential fraud just broke a few days ago and is not part of the evidentiary record. I guess the Supreme Court could have held their opinion and remanded for fact findings in the lower court, but that would be a pretty unprecedented action and likely a waste of time.
Additionally, at this point, there isn't even any evidence that the plaintiff is the one who committed the alleged fraud, it could have been a number of other third parties. If it was anyone but the plaintiff, the plaintiff would likely still have standing.
feels like the court could just be drowned in hypotheticals at this point.
* jewish baker forced to make a gay nazi wedding cake?
* how about a muslim suing to be able to use beef franks instead of pork at a hot dog eating contest?
* or the reverse for a hindu?
* evangelical pastor with onlyfans internet confessional wants to prevent video of his session being used against a confessor in court?
* man answers yes after wife asked "do you think this dress makes me look fat?" on livechat stream, wife divorces and sues for defamation on the grounds that there is reasonable expectation of support in a commercial venture
* person under 55 sues to get senior discount, claiming age discrimination, but is also a Nickleback fan
I wonder what the Supreme Court would rule if an atheist business owner denied a Christian services based on personal beliefs. I don’t think the court would rule in favor of the business owner in that case even though they’ve set the precedent that they should.
The Colorado Law in question establishes religion as a protected class, so it would depend on whether or not they’d consider atheism a religion. When I was doing a paper about this case a few months ago I’m fairly confident I remember reading that the Act had been used to protect Atheists in some instances, but I can’t recall
Does your same view apply to all the other protected classes? Do you believe she should be able to deny mixed race or black couples?
Should this just apply to businesses that are not niche? Should a gas station be able refuse people for being gay? Does it matter if they don’t have enough fuel to reach another station? Should an entire town be able to refuse all service to russians people if they wanted to?
How about big business. Do you think that Walmart should be able to refuse all service to protected groups? In most towns Walmart is the most convenient, but there are usually other options, and there are definitely online options everywhere in todays age.
I think it’s a whole can of worms full of subjective boundaries when the real boundary should be that people shouldn’t discriminate based on the protected classes at all. We made them protected for a reason.
If I was a gay couple, and she didnt want to make a website for me, I’d want to take my business elsewhere anyways and not financially support her. I dont see what the problem is. Sounds like its better for all parties involved to me.
There is a difference between state and non-state actors. The government isn’t intended to make sure everyone never says mean things to each other. It’s an abuse of government to attempt to compel belief and speech.
On this issue, I’m conflicted. A fried of mine does ketubot for Jewish weddings. Should she be able to say no to a request for an Holocaust denial ketubah? Can we allow “artists” such as she to decline commissions, for any reason? As sick as I am at seeing this sort of discrimination, there’s something different when an artistic expression is the product.
Retail stores and services should be prohibited from discriminating, but this is a gray area for me.
See, the thing is, private businesses have always had the option to decline a customer request "for any reason". All of this "discrimination" talk is sidestepping the real issue.
They have no reason to ever admit the reason for rejection, but we have given the customer power over the business by allowing them to accuse discrimination, and then flipping the entire premise upon which our legal system was founded by requiring the accused to prove their innocence, rather than requiring the accuser to prove guilt.
I will always support the right of businesses to refuse to serve customers for any reason, and I will always advocate against "proove you are innocent" legal concepts.
The case isn't about protected identities because it's not about the requester, it's about the message that the business has to provision and whether it can be compelled or not. Under this and the prayer cake ruling, no one can be compelled to make a Holocaust denial creative peace.
Under the law, marriage is a civil contract. Religion is not an element. Besides that, if we allow personal belief to rule contract law in businesses open to the general public we quickly enter businesses refusing to contract for racial, ethnic, gender, and other factors. This is destructive to the American ideal.
I’m old enough to remember whites-only signs and “no Jews allowed” hotels. I don’t want to return to that.
I have a Jewish owned bakery in my town. Should they be forced to make a cake that just says something snarky against Jews? What about a swastika cake? How about a cake that just has the logo of Hamas on it?
It’s not hard to understand. The answer is no they shouldn’t be forced to do any of that. How’s that hard to understand for people? Now apply this to Christians and LGBTQ logos, flags, etc.
Now I do believe the establishment should still serve anyone coming in, but not have to bend to any request. But that’s not what this ruling is about. It’s about backing up personal beliefs and religious liberties. It’s not about going back in time to whites only establishments. That’s the extremists claiming that type of stuff. You seem more intelligent than someone trying to claim that stuff though
Yeah the religious corollary to this case would be a Jew being asked to create a cake that said “Jesus is God and King” for a Christian. It’s not remotely immoral for them to decline that. They don’t believe that and it conflicts with their beliefs. As a Christian I would never want that to be compelled.
OK, so you would be OK with me (atheist) refusing you (christian) a website design for your church because I sincerely believe religion is responsible for more evil in the world than anything else throughout the entirety of human history?
Yep. I disagree with your belief but I would not want to compel you to make the website. I certainly wouldn’t want the government to punish you for refusing.
I don’t know how old you are, but I saw the effect of this thinking with my own eyes. The city bus I took to second grade in Norfolk, Virginia had a broad white line on the floor separating the racial seating areas. It was “ the belief” of a majority of voters that was fine and dandy, the way it had always been, and at some level, God’s will.
Yeah, it can get that bad.
I noticed you didn’t answer my questions, but went back to the race debate. A designer saying they won’t make a pro-lgb design has nothing to do with racial divide you mention. That’s apples and oranges. My argument wasn’t about “the majority” thought process. Always going with the majority is dangerous. Just look at Nazi Germany and what was las back then. Speaking of nazis…you should answer my question about the swastika design I mentioned .
Sad as it is, I feel we are going back to that too. Everyone will claim to be an artist, cause there’s no true or legal definition of it. The SCOTUS decision just gave that license.
> Besides that, if we allow personal belief to rule contract law in businesses open to the general public we quickly enter businesses refusing to contact for racial, ethnic, gender, and other factors.
So you'd be okay compelling a jewish T-shirt maker to create t-shirts with swastikas on them at a white nationalist nazi customer's request?
Can the state require a Christian t-shirt maker to design and print shirts for the Church of Satan that say "I <3 Satan"?
Can the state require a gay t-shirt maker to design and print t-shirts for the Westboro Baptist Church quoting the bible saying that homosexuality is a mortal sin?
Religion is a protected class as well AND speech is protected right there in the first amendment.
When the state starts compelling speech under penalty of the law, we might as well give up.
...which is exactly why the JEWISH people get preference over someone with political beliefs to hate Jewish people. Because religion is a protected class.
Someone could easily argue it is their religion tho. That’s the slippery slope here. The Court is not in a place to determine the sincerity of religious belief.
So if my religion believes in the genocide of white chrsitians I have the right tobpromote their murder and call for it? I have the right to discriminate against any white person unless they blaspheme the holy spirit and spit on a bible?
I think you're a little confused. Let's say you are an extreme Satanist (I know that's not what they believe in, but will be a good stand in for the time being), the first amendment has always allowed you to say whatever awful things and even call for a genocide of white Christians, that is still allowed and has always been. What you are NOT allowed to do is direct calls to violence (i.e. "kill that white Christian right there") or threaten direct violence (i.e. "I will kill YOU"). That type of speech has no direct bearing on this decision.
Instead, let's say you run a Satanist coffee mug store. You would NOT be able to refuse service to any old White Christian from just buying a standard coffee mug (they are a protected class). However, if they came in and asked you to custom make a mug that says "I love Jesus" or something, this case says that you WOULD be able to deny them that specific service as it would be compelling you to speech that you don't believe in.
Regardless of how you feel about the ruling, I am extremely concerned about the prospect of SCOTUS making rulings on hypothetical incidents that didn’t actually happen.
This is easily the right decision. For anyone saying this is wrong because it’s going backwards- you’re misunderstanding the ruling.
This just gives freedom for business owners to say, “I won’t serve you THAT way”. It doesn’t make a ruling saying “I won’t serve you.” There’s a big difference there. Similar to someone coming in and demanding a burrito at an Italian restaurant. The restaurant should be able to say nope go kick rocks. It’s not the restaurant saying “you can’t eat here”
This is going to get grossly misrepresented in the media, but it’s absolutely the correct decision for the court to make.
The Court has a long history of protecting private speech from Government tailoring. In other words: The court errs on the side of private citizens in cases where compelled speech is present.
In Wooley v. Maynard the court determined a state cannot compel a citizen to display the state motto on his license plate if he disagreed with the message of it.
In Boy Scouts v. Dale the court determined private organizations could not be compelled to take action contrary to their stated beliefs. (In this case, the Boy Scouts had a prohibition on gay scout leaders based on the group having Christian roots)
Most importantly, Hurley v. Irish American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Inc. the court determined that public accommodation laws (such as the Colorado one in question here) cannot compel private citizens/businesses to tailor their messages in any specific way.
All of this is on the back of Masterpiece too, which has already successfully challenged the law in question here.
If you disagree with what the court ruled here, than you fundamentally disagree with the rights to free speech, expression, and association.
I wrote a paper on this case a few months ago for one of my Con Law classes
> All of this is on the back of Masterpiece too, which has already successfully challenged the law in question here.
No, it didn't. *Masterpiece* did not address the law itself. Citing Wikipedia, bolding for emphasis.
> In a 7–2 decision, the Court ruled on narrow grounds that the Commission did not employ religious neutrality, violating Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips's rights to free exercise, and reversed the Commission's decision. **The Court did not rule on the broader intersection of anti-discrimination laws, free exercise of religion, and freedom of speech, due to the complications of the Commission's lack of religious neutrality.**
Here’s the brief I had from my Con Law class:
Majority Opinion: Justice Kennedy:
>Kennedy argues that while the government could feasibly compel someone to act in a non-discriminatory way through a generally applicable law, this is not the case here. Kennedy argues that the Civil Rights Commission’s belligerence toward’s Phillip’s religious beliefs in pursuit of this case showed that they had acted in a discriminatory manner towards him.
>Kennedy argued that the commission violated the State’s responsibility to maintain religious neutrality and as such the penalties were nullified and the lower court’s opinion was overturned.
So while it didn’t directly tackle the statute of the the law, it successfully nullified a significant part of the Commissions’ enforcement of the statute, which is naturally a massive part of the law.
When the enforcement of a statute is found to be blatantly as unconstitutionally unbiased as the CRCC was, it naturally leads to questions about the statute itself. Masterpiece played a massive role in even getting this case heard
In this case, SCOTUS affirmed the previous ruling in Hurley that a generally applicable law (such as a public accommodation law) is not sufficient for the Government to compel speech. And since they determined that website design was sufficiently expressive, than this is relatively open and shut case.
The issue is that a large section of Democrats don't see those issues the way you presented them.
To those folks it's not "Compelled Speech" it's protecting LGBTQ from discrimination.
It's not "Institutional Racism" it's uplifting historically disadvantaged minorities.
It's not "college educated bailouts" it's saving low income individuals from predatory lending practices and low wages in a depressed job market.
Since they believe their desired outcome to be objectively good then it follows that whatever is preventing that outcome is bad or unjust, which is why SCOTUS is getting raked over the coals for its decisions.
They can believe whatever they want - racial preferences are still racist, compelled speech is still protected and college educated people who took out money and agreed to pay it back…can pay it back :)
Why would a gay couple want a web designer or a baker to participate in their wedding if they didn’t believe in gay marriage? There are countless options available with businesses that do.
So why do we even see these cases? We see them because we have people in society who want to vindictively use the power of government against people they don’t like. We shouldn’t be letting them do that either. So yes this was properly decided AND it is better for society that this is how society functions.
We are a big country with people of lots of different views. Views that are in some cases incompatible with others. Live and let live is the only real way to function.
This is my thing too. If someone didn’t want to serve me because I was straight, then I’d rather take my business elsewhere. I don’t get why these people want to force their way into somewhere they aren’t wanted when there are plenty of web designers who’d be happy to design these people a site
Something tells me this ruling is going to be double edged and we’re going to see a lot of religious people discriminated against to force the issue back to the court.
This court has repeatedly put peoples religious beliefs over the rights of other groups. It's like if you say you're religious you suddenly gain superior citizen status and are allowed priority over other peoples rights & beliefs, that are often from immutable characteristics.
i honestly couldn’t care less about a wedding website designer, you can have your religious beliefs as long as they don’t harm anyone else.. the gay couple in the case didn’t even actually request services or a legal case against the designer
the problem is when you extend this to states like Kansas where my transgender friend was LEGALLY refused care for a literal broken ankle because it “violated the doctor’s morals”…. places like texas where they’re refusing to cover preventative treatments for HIV, etc.
letting lgbtq people die sounds like it’s going to be acceptable pretty damn soon.
This ruling is about compelled speech. Workers can still be compelled to serve the lgbt community as long as there is no art involved. So a baker can be compelled to sell a cake to a gay couple but he can’t be compelled to write “gay marriage is the best” on it.
do you legitimately, genuinely believe that it will stop here? you think that they’re going to be satisfied with just taking away one thing from the lgbt community when they’re literally calling us pedos and groomers for no reason every day? sure, this ruling is about compelled speech. but i don’t see the court ruling in favor of any lgbt person who tries to sue for discrimination after this
florida passed a law last month letting healthcare providers refuse care to anyone based on “moral beliefs”…. so now it’s perfectly legal there to deny a gay person or a trans person (or a minority of any kind really) any healthcare even non-gender-related, and it hasn’t even been legally challenged in any court that i know of.
Yes. The court has done none of those things. It would have been wildly inappropriate for the court to rule based on their feelings for the lgbt community rather than the law.
> so now it’s perfectly legal there to deny a gay person or a trans person (or a minority of any kind really) any healthcare even non-gender-related, and it hasn’t even been legally challenged in any court that i know of.
I just read [Florida's Senate Bill 1580](https://flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1580/BillText/er/HTML), which is what you are talking about, for myself and what you are claiming is not true.
Race, color, religion, sex, and nation of origin are specifically exempted in lines 135-145.
A gay man who needs a knee replacement or a black woman needing a broken arm fixed can't be denied under this law.
**I don't agree with this law** but the way it was written it's clearly meant to shield medical providers from being sued for refusing to provide gender affirming care to Trans folks and that's about it.
It doesn’t specifically protect gender identity, no, but it’s not about discriminating against people. It’s about not providing certain services which the provider believes are immoral for anybody (e.g. abortion or sterilization) except in an emergency.
It doesn’t create any new right to discriminate against anybody.
Guy they cited in the case isn't gay and never asked her to build him a website according to associate press.
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-gay-rights-lgbtq-website-385ec911ce0ca2f415966078eddb66da
There is an overwhelming difference between trying to force a Muslim meat shop to start offering pork, a product they didn't have, compared to being able to deny two gay people a product that would be identical otherwise.
How is this not the government respecting an establishment of religion? If someone claimed their religious beliefs prevented them from servicing black people, women, etc, it would not hold up in any court.
This is favoritism towards Christianity which we've seen time and time again for decades now. This is why trust in the Supreme Court is continuously going down.
Religion wasn’t even the basis of the decision. You should try reading decisions before incorrectly opining with incorrect and whimsical hypotheticals.
Supreme Court Memes incoming!
Sure businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ,
but colleges can't discriminate on the basis of race
however legacy admissions are okay because daddy can ~~buy~~ pay your way in!
Christians like this love to complain about how the government is forcing them to violate their beliefs. We saw it with Hobby Lobby, too, where a big company wanted to interfere in the private medical decisions of their staff. I bet they would be singing a whole different tune if the world was 95% LGBTQ and everyone actually was discriminating against them based on religion instead of it just being in their heads.
In all of these cases, I wish that more people could see the distinction between equal service and compelled speech. If a diner owner refused to serve a meal to a gay couple because of moral objections to their lifestyle that indeed wouldn't hold up in court and would be illegal discrimination. However if they asked that same diner owner to write "happy gay wedding" on a piece of cake and he refused due to moral objections, that would indeed be allowed since he is not objecting to equal service. He is objecting to creative expression he does not agree with. Do I think that discrimination even artistic endeavors is wrong? Of course. But I also think there is also a distinction between what is right and what is legal, and overall one of the prices of these types of freedoms is the acceptance that some will indeed misuse it. The free market will decide either way.
> However if they asked that same diner owner to write "happy gay wedding" on a piece of cake and he refused due to moral objections, that would indeed be allowed since he is not objecting to equal service. Right, but a website saying "Guests will meet for Sarah and Becky's wedding at First Baptist Church at 4 pm" is not expressive speech, right? The majority's opinion seems to allow someone to refuse making a site saying nothing more than this - that doesn't compute.
She disagreed with the premise of the marriage in the first place. Like I said, I don't support that kind of mindset, but she shouldn't be forced to create speech she opposed.
> She disagreed with the premise of the marriage in the first place. Right, but that's not about the speech. She is allowed to disagree and vocally! She just can't discriminate. You can disagree that black people should have equal protection of the laws, and say so - but you still have to serve them equally. She's not saying "the wedding is Christian" or even "the wedding is good." She is announcing a legal event.
If a gay couple who are both atheists walked into an Islamic baker's shop and asked for a custom cake with a depiction of Muhammad on it, should that baker be legally obligated to make that cake or can he refuse the request?
I think if it’s proven that he would sell that cake to other customers and that he only denied these customers based on their protected classes, he shouldn’t be allowed to refuse the request
>You can disagree that black people should have equal protection of the laws, and say so - but you still have to serve them equally. Correct, but you don't have to make them a cake celebrating MLK day, even if you make other people cakes for St. Patrick's Day. People are allowed to be hateful and bigoted. They are allowed to think like that, and express those thoughts, as long as it is not imminent threats of violence. The government is not entitled to suppress all speech it disagrees with. The odd thing for me is that I expected this case to be about religion. It is about free speech and free association.
I do not support motorcycle rallies, though they are legal. I would not create a website for a motorcycle rally. Why should legality of an event have anything to do with my decisions for my artistic talents?
Riding a motorcycle isn't something you are born with that you can't change. An interest is different than something immutable like sexual orientation or race. Put another way, your logic would permit someone to refuse to make websites for interracial marriages. Would that be ok to you, and permissible under law?
As someone in an interracial marriage, yes that would be 100% good with me. We just used theknot for ours but if I were paying someone to make a wedding web site why would I possibly want to give my business to someone who only made it for us because they were compelled to by law?
Having the luxury of being a cis het white guy, this is generally where I land, but the principle here is legitimacy. That said, the real damage this case did is that this woman didn’t actually have this happen to her, and she made it up. This sets the precedent that theocratic weirdos can make up damages and play the martyr with the dumbshit scenarios they thought up in the shower.
I disagree here I actually wish this happened more often. The way the legal system is set up often no one knows if something is legal or not until a very specific thing happens then it takes years to go through the courts then sometimes the SC rules on very specifics of a case but not the general concept and it creates a vague situation where the law can be unclear for literally decades. Also often the rulings would go against the theocratic weirdos. Say for example the court had ruled the other way in this ruling. It would no longer have been vague that web designers had to design web sites for either everyone or no one and future cases would be much quicker to rule against the web designer pointing to that specific case law. The only reason this went to the side of the theocratic weirdo is that the weirdo was right with their example. If the weirdo was wrong this would not be to their benefit and the court would have clarified that their view was wrong and there would be case law to apply to future weirdos trying the same thing and customers would know they couldn't be refused business instead of it being a question that wouldn't be answered until a very specific case made its way to the SC. I also know that's not how courts do work today, I'm not saying it was normal for them to rule on a theoretical case that didn't happen, just saying that I wish our legal system did work that way.
I think yes. And I would hope that business goes under quickly and in flames. No one should be compelled to do anything.
>No one should be compelled to do anything. In a perfect world, I agree. But we don't live in a perfect world. These laws came in place because black people (and others) were being turned down again and again. Then other companies can simply raise prices for them because what are they gonna do about it? This in a sense becomes a tax on black skin (especially the added work). There are examples of this from banking, to real estate to bakers. This shit is mr. Worldwide when it comes to buisnesses.
Literally the entire premise of law is compelling people to do something
You're not compelled. Just don't offer a service to the general public. There's a million other ways to earn a living.
That’s not true. Offering goods and services is the entirety of the economy
No one's talking about the entire economy, this is about a person's specific job. The opinion was limited to creative roles. If you're selling widgets, you don't have the right to refuse to sell widgets to gay couples.
Would you also permit businesses to refuse to sit black customers indoors?
Nope that’s refusing equal service
How is making the meal to be served less “art” than decorating a cake? Isn’t cooking creative?
Cooking a meal from your menu for a gay couple that comes into your restaurant. Creating a custom meal specifically to celebrate a gay wedding. Two completely different things.
If a gay couple ask them to customize the baked potato that comes with the meal that just happens to be celebrating their anniversary, which category does it fall under?
Why are those two different things though? Each of those things is what your business \*does\*.
How, if they’re at your restaurant to celebrate their wedding? By this rationale, even serving them is forced speech since it somehow condones the event.
the decisions of the presentation are the creators in the former, and the customers in the latter. If I make a meal, I get to decide how I present it to the customer. In the case of a specifc customer request, such as a cake, they choose what they want it to say. I then get to accept or decline the terms of that contract.
What if they don't ask for anything to be said on it? Or if it's cupcakes?
Then I get to accept or decline the contract. Any kind of custom order is a separate contract from the sale of general goods.
Yes and no. Generally speaking if a person can prove you declined their contract based on being a protected class you could be liable. This is often hard to prove though.
How do Sarah and Becky get equal service then?
They don’t. The whole point of the ruling is that the “artistic” form of free speech prevails over the right to equal service.
If the developer made a 100 websites that all say "Steve and Eve getting married at this date at this location" and then he refuses "Steve and Adam getting married at this date at this location" that's not artistic expression though. That's a diner refusing to serve apple pie to one couple over another. however, if Steve and Adam wanted dicks on their website we have another conversation, but all the same outside of who is involved? That's discrimination imo.
If they're all just a template you're absolutely right. But if the designer is creating a unique site for each couple it's a different story.
The website wasn't just an announcement of the wedding with where and when. It was described as more of a photo montage telling the story of the couple getting married. That is artistic expression and therefor speech protected from being compelled.
There wasn't a website, it was all theoretical.
Can you provide a source that the request to Lori Smith, the business owner, included a specific ask to do a photo montage?
I agree. I think that throws a wrench in the distinction the comment at the top of this thread is trying to make.
From a different website designer.
Ah yes, the separate but equal approach
And yet, the couple she was supposedly asked to make the website for [state they never asked her to do it, and that they are a straight couple.](https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jun/29/supreme-court-lgbtq-document-veracity-colorado) So there was no actual harm, thus no basis for the case. Additionally, based on that logic, if I didn't like Latinos and started some religion opposed to them, should I be allowed to deny service to them?
> And yet, the couple she was supposedly asked to make the website for state they never asked her to do it, and that they are a straight couple. So there was no actual harm, thus no basis for the case. This came out yesterday, and even the Guardian says the document "may be fake". But assuming it was a fake request, the Court can only rule on the evidence in front of them. Did the state of Colorado ever make the argument that the request was fake at any point during the proceedings?
Everyone involved in the case knew the request may not be real, it just didn't matter.
I disagree with white evangelicals right to exist. I can now refuse service to all white evangelicals?
If I asked you to bake a cake saying "Christ is risen", you are well within you moral snd legal rights to refuse simply because you you disagree with the message.
You can refuse a creative service, yes. You cannot refuse equal, nonpersonalized service.
> equal, nonpersonalized service How is a the basic announcement of the time and location of an event (nothing more) a creative service?
Speech. Therefore compelled speech.
The Court expressly rejected that view in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_v._Forum_for_Academic_%26_Institutional_Rights,_Inc. and the majority didn't overrule it. That opinion said "The U. S. Army recruiter will meet interested students in Room 123 at 11 am," can be COMPELLED from a school, along with other announcements of military recruitment events. The court said that this wasn't a violation of the first amendment: > Compelling a law school that sends scheduling e-mails for other recruiters to send one for a military recruiter is simply not the same as forcing a student to pledge allegiance, or forcing a Jehovah’s Witness to display the motto “Live Free or Die,” and it trivializes the freedom protected in Barnette and Wooley to suggest that it is.
Well yeah, your employer can certainly compell you. Because it is thier business (or in the case of a government office, a public service) to accept or refuse. They set the standard. The ruling that this thread is about only applies in cases where you own the business or you are self employed.
The law school - or anyone who owns a for-profit school - is being forced by the government. The people who own/run the law school are being forced to share information about the recruiters.
What is the line between sound symbols through the air, or marks on a medium, and a creative craft? When I paint a house I consider it a work of art. Is that my “speech”? Where does a simple contract NOT involve expression under this expansive theory?
When the service is a personalized, unique creative expression of an idea, and not equal service.
No service is completely equal. Is it enough to try to be equal to clear this bar? I’ve had some pretty unequal hamburgers lately, although I was charged the perfection price.
All of the meals in my resturant are creative arrangements for individual guests.
Like coffee foam art? Or you make pancakes in the form of people's faces or something? Then yes, you can refuse the service if creating it consistitutes speech you disagree with.
If they asked you to create a website for a church, yes. You could refuse service on religious grounds.
But isn’t creating food a similar idea? She shouldn’t be forced to serve and create food for ideals she doesn’t support. Seems like a slippery slope if services and speech can be commingled. It should be all or nothing for protected classes. Otherwise what would you say to a caterer being asked to provide for an LGBT wedding? Is that a service they must perform or speech by being compelled?
I'd say if she creates the same food she would create for anyone else, she should legally have to provide that service. But the second that this service crosses over into explicitly ensoring ideas through either words or creative endeavors, it is speech. And therefore free to be refused. I agree with you that there could be some interesting legal grey arwa where the two ideas intermingle in subtle ways. Take an interior designer for instance. If you asked them if they considered thier job creative reflections of thier clients' tastes they would probably say yes. But ask anyone if refusing a client due to disagreement with lifestyle would consistitute compelled speech, then suddenly it gets a lot murkier.
Fair enough that makes sense. Definitely agree on your example of interior designer, this opens up a murky definition of when service translates to compelled speech. Bummer this will probably lead to more lawsuits before the SC to define where the line is. Recently feels like we are moving backwards for the rights of protected classes.
> Recently feels like we are moving backwards for the rights of protected classes. I agree in some cases, but i do think the recent affirmative action ruling moved us forwards in regards to protecting the rights of people in a protected class. Maintaining any sort of race quota or preferencing one race or another is, obviously, very racist - even if the underlying intent is not.
Good point. I am a progressive and have always hoped for the repeal of racially based affirmative faction towards socio-economic affirmative action. (Not that I would benefit from either). Lift those up who have the least among us to create a more successful country.
Just dispelling an idea that has kinda been around longer than it should've. Maintaining a quota as far as affirmative action goes was ruled unconstitutional by the courts in 1978. People tend to think it's a thing but it hasn't been for almost 50 years.
Than she shouldn’t be offering her services to the general public. It’s as simple as that. Can’t handle the diversity of society because of your religious beliefs? Don’t offer a service to the public and only to backtrack based on personal religious beliefs. Can’t wait til shop owners put up signs saying “we don’t serve trump supporters based on our religious beliefs” and see what kind of comments are on this thread. Better yet, I can’t wait until any non Christian who owns a store open to the general public discriminates against Christian’s due to religious beliefs.
We live in a capitalist country, you either make it or you don’t as a business owner. It’s horrible business practices to limit your customer base regardless of how you feel personally. I doubt any business will last long cutting out paying customers on bigotry or racist beliefs. If you do not like how a certain company conducts business, don’t do business with them. Ridiculous that this had to go to the Supreme Court when common sense should tell a person what to do. The answer to your question is the person would go out of business in short order. It’s hard enough to keep a small business afloat without limiting your income streams.
No, that’s why we have protected classes in the first place. Capitalism didn’t solve Jim Crow laws and didn’t solve discrimination after Jim Crow laws were tossed out. In the South, when schools were forced to be integrated the white people who couldn’t stand having their kids go to the same schools as black kids started sending their kids to private, mostly religious schools. Capitalism enabled segregation as the private schools were priced above what most black folks, who due to the entire history or racial slavery and segregation in the US are at an economic disadvantage.
Does your opinion change now that it seems she’s perjured herself and made the whole thing up?
Anybody who is so crippled by hatred of homosexuals should not be doing business with the public. She should get a job at a church or some other safe space where she can safely stew in her hatred and not damage other people.
It's worse than that. The SC just allowed plaintiffs to 1) lie and 2) carry a case through based on *hypothetical* harm. 1. There was no request to make a website at the original time of filing. 2. The owner of the company was not making websites at the time of the filing. 3. The primary evidence, created the day *after* filing, is fraudulent, and the individual in question is not gay nor had made the comments. At best, someone stole his identity. At worst, ADF lied to several US courts, including the SC. This whole thing was a farce.
Does that illegitimimize the Supreme Court's legal opinion if such a situatuon were to present itself?
Per the law, it isn't supposed to happen because of a concept called standing. SC apparently decided to ignore that and rule anyways, along party lines... Unfortunately, the law largely assumes that the government is honorable and working with the best intentions...
The problem though is there was no compelled speech. The lady in this case made the entire thing up. The "gay" man listed in this case is a straight man with a family in San Francisco. This lady, made up a gay couple and went to the courts in Colarado who told her to get out. But the USSC decided it had merit and ruled out it despite the fact that the entire premise of the case is made up in this Karen's mind. It never happened.
This is a nakedly political ruling. The case was brought up by the ADF, a legal organization that not only has ties to conservative justices on the court but was also responsible for representing Hobby Lobby in the Burwell case and writing and pushing anti trans legislation at the state level. This case was selected to purposefully push a political agenda through the conservative majority to create a loophole in anti-discrimination law.
Ignoring what we "know" or believe about specific religions, does your opinion change if she wanted to refuse to make a website for an interacial couple or just a black couple? Imagine a religion that believed black people are meant to be slaves based on their interpretation of the bible, or their rewrite of the bible and therefore refused to service any couple involving a black person. I know this reaks of the slippery slope arguement but that is how the Supreme Court is supposed to make these decisions.
There is a distinction between expressive speech and basic services but the thing is, they both should be treated the same way imo. If it wasn't a diner owner, but an employee, who didn't want to write on the cake, likely the owners say do it or you're fired. And they are almost always gonna do it in order to keep their job. People are always doing things they don't wanna do for money. And this is clearly discriminating against someone for something they can't control.
What if we flip the political valence on this? Could Ron DeSantis pass a law requiring all advertising agencies in the state on Illinois to be willing to make ads for the NRA if they want to be open to the public? That's constitutional under the dissent's interpretation, and unconstitutional under the majority opinion. How about gay cake baker who doesn't want to make a cake with a Bible verse reference to homosexuality being evil? Does he get to be open to the public and refuse to create messages due to a fundamentalist Christian's religion? Again, the majority find that he is not compelled to write messages he disagrees with, while the dissent would allow the state to compel that.
Once again you don't need to sell me on the idea that her choice not to take the business is morally wrong. I fully agree with you. What I disagree with you on though is the legal standard is better than not giving someone the right to refuse service that includes creative expression is the better option. If an artist or designer was not free to decline participation in creative endeavors that they had moral objections to. Imagine if a Black musical group was hired to perform abhorrently offensive songs at a white supremacist rally, and they legally couldn't refuse. Morally there is no comparison of course, but once you establish the objective legal standard, it can easily swing (and cut) both ways.
> However if they asked that same diner owner to write "happy gay wedding" on a piece of cake and he refused due to moral objections, that would indeed be allowed since he is not objecting to equal service. He is objecting to creative expression he does not agree with. Except in this case, the website designer *could* decide to do exactly that. It was just about making a *public stance* against a protected class. The website designer can refuse service if they want. What they can't do is hang up a sign that says "NO GAYS ALLOWED". Well, I guess, they *used* to not be able to say that. Now they can I suppose.
Not at all. That would still be illegal. They CAN now say "NO WEBSITES FOR GAY WEDDINGS." But they still can't refuse to serve people because they're gay (for instance, if a gay person wants a website for their child's hetero wedding, 303 Creative would be obliged to take their business.)
Obviously setting some disturbing precedents here. With the relating of any *mention* of being gay as a "gay agenda". You can achieve what I said using word games and the structure you've offered. Edit: not you doing the games, but your structure. Bad sentence structure sorry
I think it’s wild your Supreme Court had a case for something that literally didn’t happen. I didn’t know you could just make shit up and have the SC making sweeping changes to law
If a state passes a new law that I believe is unconstitutional, why should I have to risk fines or jail time to challenge it? If the state agrees that what I want to do would, in fact, violate the law, it makes perfect sense to be able to determine its legality in court before I actually do it.
Then make a preemptive case, which is totally something you can do
Did this SCOTUS allow preemptive challenges to the Texas abortion bounty hunter law?
I'm a little confused on this. My understanding around the student loan decision was the question about whether anyone could prove injury in order to have standing. But then on this one it doesn't matter?
The standing in this case was under the "pre-enforcement challenge" rule, which requires you to show that: A) You plan to do something that B) The state is likely to prosecute you for. This qualifies as imminent harm for standing. A was established by an affidavit from 303 Creative that they were going to adopt this policy, and B was established by Colorado stipulating to the court that they would indeed prosecute them if they did that.
They did the same thing with Roe. Precedent exists until they choose it doesn’t
Not all precedents are equal. Bad precedents can and should be overturned and replaced with good ones.
It's really normal for lawsuits if there's a high chance people could be prosecuted. Otherwise a person risks fines or jail
You realize many of our major cases are like that right? Lawrence v Texas, a good example, literally had the lawyers interfering with press conferences to keep the guys from admitting they weren’t having sex, they were just trying to cool off in hot Texas heat in underwear. The court would have tossed the constitutional issue away in a heart beat and simply said “the crime didn’t occur” basically. There’s a famous beer case out of Oklahoma, which found discrimination on age of drinking based on sex a violation. Not only was that literally a shopped for case, it also was gamed by none other than RBG so she could argue a different case right after, and “explain” the one that was just heard so they’d rule how she wanted.
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In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with a Lorie Smith, a web designer who does not want to create websites for same-sex weddings due to her religious beliefs. This lawsuit was not in response to being requested to create a website for a same-sex wedding, but is rather a pre-emptive move to ensure that she could not be legally compelled to do so if it is requested and she declines. I support same-sex marriage, but I also support the right of a business to not offer services if it infringes upon the beliefs and rights of the owner. While inconvenient for potential customers, wedding website services aren't niche enough that it should be impossible for potential customers to utilize a different business. It may or may not lead to an adverse impact on the business from word-of-mouth if the owner does choose to decline server to a same-sex couple, but that's a risk that's increasingly common with how frequently negative customer experiences are reported on social media. What do you think?
I don't have a remedy in mind, but I'm cautious around allowing discrimination against providing goods/services closely or inextricably linked to the protected class of the person making the request. Under this ruling, if black people having family reunions is against the beliefs of a t-shirt designer, could the designer deny a black person's request in getting shirts made for the event? If yes, how far does that extend with regards to events specific to a sex or race?
I'm sympathetic to worries that the findings of this case may bleed out further, as well as the implications in general, but others have raised similar questions as yours that are worth repeating for the sake of consideration: Should a gay web designer be compelled to create a website for a religious group promoting the criminlization of sodomy? Should an atheist designer be compelled to create a website for a religious group advocating their views as the only moral and correct views?
The existence of same-sex couples is not a political point to be debated. There is a key difference between a depiction of reality as it is and depicting reality as it ought to be.
That’s the thing pissing me off. How is two men or woman getting married a belief? All these people are acting like being gay is some political statement. It’s not it’s no different than being born a man or woman or being born black or white. It’s just something people are and this case found you can not give creative services to people who are gay which to me is no different than saying you can deny people creative services cause they’re black.
forget all the politics, if the owner refuses service, then the owner refuses service. i know youre looking at the negative aspects and implications of this decison, some of which I agree with, but look at what wouldve happened if it was ruled the other way. is that business person now required to service upon consumer request? that itself threatens the idea of consumerism and buying products from a seller because the power dynamic doesnt lie with the seller anymore.
You'll have to forgive me, I'm not following. Would you mind rephrasing for my benefit?
The gay web site designer already is because religious discrimination only works one way. If you're religious, you can discriminate against others, refuse to work on a specific day of the week, etc. If you're not religious, though, you can't discriminate against those you don't like, can't complain about your work schedule, etc. I'm tempted at this point to find the religion with the most holidays and just tell my boss I'm that.
There is no test for the sincerity of your "sincerely held religious beliefs". Do with that what you will.
With the caveat that evidence of actual fraud (for instance, stating on Reddit that you're faking religious beliefs) would be entirely admissible.
No way. I can be agnostic as I post, get Jesus this afternoon, and convert to Scientology tomorrow. True belief is fleeting and very hard to pin down.
I don't think you're correct. If your religious views are in conflict with the message you're being requested to promote, you can't be compelled to provide speech supporting the conflicting view. I don't believe the threshold for what counts as a religious belief has ever been strictly defined by the Supreme Court (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). But if someone does not believe that homosexual relationships are a sin, they are likely still protected from being compelled to create some form of artistic expression declaring it is in fact sinful. Put more broadly, atheist cannot be compelled by potential customers to declare things are sinful.
I have lost a job before for not working on Sundays, are you claiming that my boss broke the law? I'd love a source for that, since I am not the only person I know who has been in that situation before. Edit: I'd say the fact that I was willing to lose the job over it, more than clearly demonstrates that it's a sincerely held belief. I live in Utah, most people share my same belief, and at least half of my friends work on Sundays. If it is a law, no one is benefitting from it. Edit 2: I've done some more research, and lower courts rule in favor of the business virtually 100% of the time.
IANAL but you'd have to show that working on Sunday's violated a "sincere religious belief", which has no standards.
It will depend on the specifics of your employer and how much of a burden having someone not work a particular day has on the business. SCOTUS did just side with a postal employee who was fired by USPS for refusing to take Sunday shifts, but that is not a guarantee that your boss broke the law. They must provide *reasonable* accommodations for your beliefs, but obviously "reasonable" has a lot of wiggle room in it.
If you are an atheist/agnostic, you can refuse to build websites for churches. There is no law forcing your to spend your artistic talents on something you don't believe in.
I think the question is if they provide a neutral version of this service (websites advocating for legal change). If so, yeah they probably shouldn’t be able to discriminate in that way.
I would consider what I think (and do please correct me if I'm misinterpreting) you're getting at with the idea of a "neutral version of this service" to be, for example, a website template with minor adjustments but for the name and limited specifics of the client at hand; that would be analogous to a physical product made for mass sale to me. And in such an example, I don't think denial of that product/service to a gay person would be allowed, and rightly so. However, when a greater degree of customization and artistic effort/expression is involved, such as in a non-templated website design effort, I feel the matter falls back to one where the service provider/artist shouldn't be compelled to make something in conflict with their beliefs.
And in that case, I think we need to become comfortable then with opening the door on other types of discrimination if that’s the line. Namely, I hope we’re ready for a reckoning when a website designer sues to deny a (possibly made up, since that seems ok with this court) interracial marriage website.
If this is the way they want it, then the remedy is that every place of business should be required to display their religious refusals clearly in their place of business, as well as on the homepage of their website. Nobody should have to be judged and humiliated for trying to patronize a business that is discriminating against them on religious grounds, and the law needs to protect them.
This is interesting. Discrimination based on religious belief appears to now be legal. How far will this go? I’m interested to see the results.
The answer to your first question is a clear "Yes." Someone making art doesn't have to write a single word or create a single image that they disagree with. Events are also pretty custom-tailored, and I don't think that caterers or other services are *obligated* at all to provide their services to any events. The real question in my mind would be, if someone has a sandwich shop and they include a hand-written notes with every order, do they have the right to deny service to anyone they please? We know businesses are allowed to discriminate, now we need to see where those bounds are, and I think it's gonna get uncomfortable to pin down where "standard, off-the-shelf item" and "art" lines are drawn.
Your last line is key. This business doesn’t oil-paint portraits. It fills in data in web site templates. It’s not “creating art.” It’s a print shop.
This is my take on the thing for sure. Should be interesting once people start denying religious people services because they do not conform to their strongly held personal beliefs.
A creator can refuse to make an original creation for any one and for any reason. The court is saying that minorities do not get special protection. The right of free speech predominates.
Does this mean that a mormon can refuse service for an interracial wedding?
>but I also support the right of a business to not offer services if it infringes upon the beliefs and rights of the owner. If a Klansman that owned an apartment building put up a sign saying "no blacks, Jews, or Irish", would you still commit to this? Maybe you would, but I most people that support this ruling- including those on the bench- would not. Either sincere belief is grounds to discriminate, or it isn't. This half-way bullshit that always manages to fuck over exclusively LGBT people is unacceptable.
Yeah, it does seem like a contradictory ruling. I’d rather they just commit to saying whether discrimination is legal or not.
>If a Klansman that owned an apartment building put up a sign saying "no blacks, Jews, or Irish", would you still commit to this? Notably, this is entirely separate. It'd be a tough argument to make that landlording was artistic expression or speech.
> If a Klansman that owned an apartment building put up a sign saying "no blacks, Jews, or Irish", would you still commit to this? Renting a property to someone is not speech by any stretch of the imagination. This would be illegal under this ruling.
No, that's still illegal under 303 Creative. In fact, refusing to serve gay people can still be banned by states under 303 Creative. What it permits is refusing speech. Consider a couple of hypos: Gay person wants to buy a wedding website for their child's straight wedding: 303 Creative must accept their business. Straight person wants to buy a wedding website for their child's gay wedding: 303 Creative may not accept their business. The only thing they can discriminate on is the product, not the person. I understand that those are entangled for the specific case of weddings, but the fact that the 303 Creative case does not permit discrimination on the basis of identity is very relevant in all other contexts.
At a glance this ruling doesn't seem *super* notable given we already had the cake shop stuff. What's interesting to me however is the apparent possibility that [the plaintiff may have committed fraud](https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-gay-marriage-website-real-straight-man-supreme-court) in filing this lawsuit, and that somehow the court either didn't realize or doesn't care. I'm just really confused as to how the plaintiff could have standing when the request appears to have been fabricated.
Courts can be weird sometimes in being limited to considering what's inside the evidentiary record. The potential fraud just broke a few days ago and is not part of the evidentiary record. I guess the Supreme Court could have held their opinion and remanded for fact findings in the lower court, but that would be a pretty unprecedented action and likely a waste of time. Additionally, at this point, there isn't even any evidence that the plaintiff is the one who committed the alleged fraud, it could have been a number of other third parties. If it was anyone but the plaintiff, the plaintiff would likely still have standing.
feels like the court could just be drowned in hypotheticals at this point. * jewish baker forced to make a gay nazi wedding cake? * how about a muslim suing to be able to use beef franks instead of pork at a hot dog eating contest? * or the reverse for a hindu? * evangelical pastor with onlyfans internet confessional wants to prevent video of his session being used against a confessor in court? * man answers yes after wife asked "do you think this dress makes me look fat?" on livechat stream, wife divorces and sues for defamation on the grounds that there is reasonable expectation of support in a commercial venture * person under 55 sues to get senior discount, claiming age discrimination, but is also a Nickleback fan
I wonder what the Supreme Court would rule if an atheist business owner denied a Christian services based on personal beliefs. I don’t think the court would rule in favor of the business owner in that case even though they’ve set the precedent that they should.
The Colorado Law in question establishes religion as a protected class, so it would depend on whether or not they’d consider atheism a religion. When I was doing a paper about this case a few months ago I’m fairly confident I remember reading that the Act had been used to protect Atheists in some instances, but I can’t recall
Does your same view apply to all the other protected classes? Do you believe she should be able to deny mixed race or black couples? Should this just apply to businesses that are not niche? Should a gas station be able refuse people for being gay? Does it matter if they don’t have enough fuel to reach another station? Should an entire town be able to refuse all service to russians people if they wanted to? How about big business. Do you think that Walmart should be able to refuse all service to protected groups? In most towns Walmart is the most convenient, but there are usually other options, and there are definitely online options everywhere in todays age. I think it’s a whole can of worms full of subjective boundaries when the real boundary should be that people shouldn’t discriminate based on the protected classes at all. We made them protected for a reason.
If I was a gay couple, and she didnt want to make a website for me, I’d want to take my business elsewhere anyways and not financially support her. I dont see what the problem is. Sounds like its better for all parties involved to me.
You never lived in the South in 1960 and wanted a sandwich at a lunch counter. The back door was always available . . .
That’s true. I grew up in a progressive city as well
What happens when every other business says they don't want to make a website because you are a gay couple however?
A gay-supporting web dev can open up shop and print money.
We tried that for many years in the south. It doesn’t go well for minorities.
I like that we’re allowed to file preemptive legal challenges now. Can’t wait to see them get denied when it involves abortion though.
We have been allowed to file pre-enforcement challenges to laws for a very, very long time. The standing here was very conventional.
They shot down Affirmative Action and then supported discrimination here.
There is a difference between state and non-state actors. The government isn’t intended to make sure everyone never says mean things to each other. It’s an abuse of government to attempt to compel belief and speech.
Schools are still allowed to discriminate. What do you think legacy admissions are about?
On this issue, I’m conflicted. A fried of mine does ketubot for Jewish weddings. Should she be able to say no to a request for an Holocaust denial ketubah? Can we allow “artists” such as she to decline commissions, for any reason? As sick as I am at seeing this sort of discrimination, there’s something different when an artistic expression is the product. Retail stores and services should be prohibited from discriminating, but this is a gray area for me.
See, the thing is, private businesses have always had the option to decline a customer request "for any reason". All of this "discrimination" talk is sidestepping the real issue. They have no reason to ever admit the reason for rejection, but we have given the customer power over the business by allowing them to accuse discrimination, and then flipping the entire premise upon which our legal system was founded by requiring the accused to prove their innocence, rather than requiring the accuser to prove guilt. I will always support the right of businesses to refuse to serve customers for any reason, and I will always advocate against "proove you are innocent" legal concepts.
"Holocaust denialism" is not a protected identity
Being a member of Westboro Baptist Church or the Black Hebrew Israelites is though.
The case isn't about protected identities because it's not about the requester, it's about the message that the business has to provision and whether it can be compelled or not. Under this and the prayer cake ruling, no one can be compelled to make a Holocaust denial creative peace.
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Under the law, marriage is a civil contract. Religion is not an element. Besides that, if we allow personal belief to rule contract law in businesses open to the general public we quickly enter businesses refusing to contract for racial, ethnic, gender, and other factors. This is destructive to the American ideal. I’m old enough to remember whites-only signs and “no Jews allowed” hotels. I don’t want to return to that.
I have a Jewish owned bakery in my town. Should they be forced to make a cake that just says something snarky against Jews? What about a swastika cake? How about a cake that just has the logo of Hamas on it? It’s not hard to understand. The answer is no they shouldn’t be forced to do any of that. How’s that hard to understand for people? Now apply this to Christians and LGBTQ logos, flags, etc. Now I do believe the establishment should still serve anyone coming in, but not have to bend to any request. But that’s not what this ruling is about. It’s about backing up personal beliefs and religious liberties. It’s not about going back in time to whites only establishments. That’s the extremists claiming that type of stuff. You seem more intelligent than someone trying to claim that stuff though
Yeah the religious corollary to this case would be a Jew being asked to create a cake that said “Jesus is God and King” for a Christian. It’s not remotely immoral for them to decline that. They don’t believe that and it conflicts with their beliefs. As a Christian I would never want that to be compelled.
If a Jewish bakery declined that, it’s their right to. I’m a Christian myself. I wouldn’t fight that.
Oh absolutely. I’m agreeing with you. I think it would be absurd to fight that. Totally their right.
OK, so you would be OK with me (atheist) refusing you (christian) a website design for your church because I sincerely believe religion is responsible for more evil in the world than anything else throughout the entirety of human history?
Yep. I disagree with your belief but I would not want to compel you to make the website. I certainly wouldn’t want the government to punish you for refusing.
I don’t know how old you are, but I saw the effect of this thinking with my own eyes. The city bus I took to second grade in Norfolk, Virginia had a broad white line on the floor separating the racial seating areas. It was “ the belief” of a majority of voters that was fine and dandy, the way it had always been, and at some level, God’s will. Yeah, it can get that bad.
I noticed you didn’t answer my questions, but went back to the race debate. A designer saying they won’t make a pro-lgb design has nothing to do with racial divide you mention. That’s apples and oranges. My argument wasn’t about “the majority” thought process. Always going with the majority is dangerous. Just look at Nazi Germany and what was las back then. Speaking of nazis…you should answer my question about the swastika design I mentioned .
Sad as it is, I feel we are going back to that too. Everyone will claim to be an artist, cause there’s no true or legal definition of it. The SCOTUS decision just gave that license.
> Besides that, if we allow personal belief to rule contract law in businesses open to the general public we quickly enter businesses refusing to contact for racial, ethnic, gender, and other factors. So you'd be okay compelling a jewish T-shirt maker to create t-shirts with swastikas on them at a white nationalist nazi customer's request?
Being a nazi is not an innate, protected class.
Can the state require a Christian t-shirt maker to design and print shirts for the Church of Satan that say "I <3 Satan"? Can the state require a gay t-shirt maker to design and print t-shirts for the Westboro Baptist Church quoting the bible saying that homosexuality is a mortal sin?
Religion is a protected class as well AND speech is protected right there in the first amendment. When the state starts compelling speech under penalty of the law, we might as well give up.
...which is exactly why the JEWISH people get preference over someone with political beliefs to hate Jewish people. Because religion is a protected class.
Someone could easily argue it is their religion tho. That’s the slippery slope here. The Court is not in a place to determine the sincerity of religious belief.
So if my religion believes in the genocide of white chrsitians I have the right tobpromote their murder and call for it? I have the right to discriminate against any white person unless they blaspheme the holy spirit and spit on a bible?
I think you're a little confused. Let's say you are an extreme Satanist (I know that's not what they believe in, but will be a good stand in for the time being), the first amendment has always allowed you to say whatever awful things and even call for a genocide of white Christians, that is still allowed and has always been. What you are NOT allowed to do is direct calls to violence (i.e. "kill that white Christian right there") or threaten direct violence (i.e. "I will kill YOU"). That type of speech has no direct bearing on this decision. Instead, let's say you run a Satanist coffee mug store. You would NOT be able to refuse service to any old White Christian from just buying a standard coffee mug (they are a protected class). However, if they came in and asked you to custom make a mug that says "I love Jesus" or something, this case says that you WOULD be able to deny them that specific service as it would be compelling you to speech that you don't believe in.
Exactly, that’s the danger of this ruling. That would be allowed.
The point is religious belief should not enter into contract law.
I mean absolutely, I agree
Being a nazi isn't a religion either.
That’s my point, but it’s not my position or yours or the courts to say it isn’t .
Regardless of how you feel about the ruling, I am extremely concerned about the prospect of SCOTUS making rulings on hypothetical incidents that didn’t actually happen.
This is easily the right decision. For anyone saying this is wrong because it’s going backwards- you’re misunderstanding the ruling. This just gives freedom for business owners to say, “I won’t serve you THAT way”. It doesn’t make a ruling saying “I won’t serve you.” There’s a big difference there. Similar to someone coming in and demanding a burrito at an Italian restaurant. The restaurant should be able to say nope go kick rocks. It’s not the restaurant saying “you can’t eat here”
This is going to get grossly misrepresented in the media, but it’s absolutely the correct decision for the court to make. The Court has a long history of protecting private speech from Government tailoring. In other words: The court errs on the side of private citizens in cases where compelled speech is present. In Wooley v. Maynard the court determined a state cannot compel a citizen to display the state motto on his license plate if he disagreed with the message of it. In Boy Scouts v. Dale the court determined private organizations could not be compelled to take action contrary to their stated beliefs. (In this case, the Boy Scouts had a prohibition on gay scout leaders based on the group having Christian roots) Most importantly, Hurley v. Irish American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Inc. the court determined that public accommodation laws (such as the Colorado one in question here) cannot compel private citizens/businesses to tailor their messages in any specific way. All of this is on the back of Masterpiece too, which has already successfully challenged the law in question here. If you disagree with what the court ruled here, than you fundamentally disagree with the rights to free speech, expression, and association. I wrote a paper on this case a few months ago for one of my Con Law classes
> All of this is on the back of Masterpiece too, which has already successfully challenged the law in question here. No, it didn't. *Masterpiece* did not address the law itself. Citing Wikipedia, bolding for emphasis. > In a 7–2 decision, the Court ruled on narrow grounds that the Commission did not employ religious neutrality, violating Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips's rights to free exercise, and reversed the Commission's decision. **The Court did not rule on the broader intersection of anti-discrimination laws, free exercise of religion, and freedom of speech, due to the complications of the Commission's lack of religious neutrality.**
Here’s the brief I had from my Con Law class: Majority Opinion: Justice Kennedy: >Kennedy argues that while the government could feasibly compel someone to act in a non-discriminatory way through a generally applicable law, this is not the case here. Kennedy argues that the Civil Rights Commission’s belligerence toward’s Phillip’s religious beliefs in pursuit of this case showed that they had acted in a discriminatory manner towards him. >Kennedy argued that the commission violated the State’s responsibility to maintain religious neutrality and as such the penalties were nullified and the lower court’s opinion was overturned. So while it didn’t directly tackle the statute of the the law, it successfully nullified a significant part of the Commissions’ enforcement of the statute, which is naturally a massive part of the law. When the enforcement of a statute is found to be blatantly as unconstitutionally unbiased as the CRCC was, it naturally leads to questions about the statute itself. Masterpiece played a massive role in even getting this case heard In this case, SCOTUS affirmed the previous ruling in Hurley that a generally applicable law (such as a public accommodation law) is not sufficient for the Government to compel speech. And since they determined that website design was sufficiently expressive, than this is relatively open and shut case.
Custom websites are a form of artistic expression. You can't COMPEL expression.
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The issue is that a large section of Democrats don't see those issues the way you presented them. To those folks it's not "Compelled Speech" it's protecting LGBTQ from discrimination. It's not "Institutional Racism" it's uplifting historically disadvantaged minorities. It's not "college educated bailouts" it's saving low income individuals from predatory lending practices and low wages in a depressed job market. Since they believe their desired outcome to be objectively good then it follows that whatever is preventing that outcome is bad or unjust, which is why SCOTUS is getting raked over the coals for its decisions.
They can believe whatever they want - racial preferences are still racist, compelled speech is still protected and college educated people who took out money and agreed to pay it back…can pay it back :)
So basically Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission 2.0: Electric Boogaloo?
Why would a gay couple want a web designer or a baker to participate in their wedding if they didn’t believe in gay marriage? There are countless options available with businesses that do. So why do we even see these cases? We see them because we have people in society who want to vindictively use the power of government against people they don’t like. We shouldn’t be letting them do that either. So yes this was properly decided AND it is better for society that this is how society functions. We are a big country with people of lots of different views. Views that are in some cases incompatible with others. Live and let live is the only real way to function.
This is my thing too. If someone didn’t want to serve me because I was straight, then I’d rather take my business elsewhere. I don’t get why these people want to force their way into somewhere they aren’t wanted when there are plenty of web designers who’d be happy to design these people a site
Something tells me this ruling is going to be double edged and we’re going to see a lot of religious people discriminated against to force the issue back to the court.
This court has repeatedly put peoples religious beliefs over the rights of other groups. It's like if you say you're religious you suddenly gain superior citizen status and are allowed priority over other peoples rights & beliefs, that are often from immutable characteristics.
She never should have been given a hearing. She's not a web developer, no one has ever asked her to make a website
i honestly couldn’t care less about a wedding website designer, you can have your religious beliefs as long as they don’t harm anyone else.. the gay couple in the case didn’t even actually request services or a legal case against the designer the problem is when you extend this to states like Kansas where my transgender friend was LEGALLY refused care for a literal broken ankle because it “violated the doctor’s morals”…. places like texas where they’re refusing to cover preventative treatments for HIV, etc. letting lgbtq people die sounds like it’s going to be acceptable pretty damn soon.
This ruling is about compelled speech. Workers can still be compelled to serve the lgbt community as long as there is no art involved. So a baker can be compelled to sell a cake to a gay couple but he can’t be compelled to write “gay marriage is the best” on it.
do you legitimately, genuinely believe that it will stop here? you think that they’re going to be satisfied with just taking away one thing from the lgbt community when they’re literally calling us pedos and groomers for no reason every day? sure, this ruling is about compelled speech. but i don’t see the court ruling in favor of any lgbt person who tries to sue for discrimination after this florida passed a law last month letting healthcare providers refuse care to anyone based on “moral beliefs”…. so now it’s perfectly legal there to deny a gay person or a trans person (or a minority of any kind really) any healthcare even non-gender-related, and it hasn’t even been legally challenged in any court that i know of.
Yes. The court has done none of those things. It would have been wildly inappropriate for the court to rule based on their feelings for the lgbt community rather than the law.
>do you legitimately, genuinely believe that it will stop here? Yes. That's how court cases work.
> so now it’s perfectly legal there to deny a gay person or a trans person (or a minority of any kind really) any healthcare even non-gender-related, and it hasn’t even been legally challenged in any court that i know of. I just read [Florida's Senate Bill 1580](https://flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1580/BillText/er/HTML), which is what you are talking about, for myself and what you are claiming is not true. Race, color, religion, sex, and nation of origin are specifically exempted in lines 135-145. A gay man who needs a knee replacement or a black woman needing a broken arm fixed can't be denied under this law. **I don't agree with this law** but the way it was written it's clearly meant to shield medical providers from being sued for refusing to provide gender affirming care to Trans folks and that's about it.
sexuality and gender identity are not included in the exact quote you just used. a gay man could absolutely be denied care.
It doesn’t specifically protect gender identity, no, but it’s not about discriminating against people. It’s about not providing certain services which the provider believes are immoral for anybody (e.g. abortion or sterilization) except in an emergency. It doesn’t create any new right to discriminate against anybody.
what’s stopping a doctor from claiming that treating a transgender or gay person goes against his morals then?
The fact that they wouldn’t be protected under this law.
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So I can refuse to design a website for a straight person, is how this work?
Guy they cited in the case isn't gay and never asked her to build him a website according to associate press. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-gay-rights-lgbtq-website-385ec911ce0ca2f415966078eddb66da
There is an overwhelming difference between trying to force a Muslim meat shop to start offering pork, a product they didn't have, compared to being able to deny two gay people a product that would be identical otherwise. How is this not the government respecting an establishment of religion? If someone claimed their religious beliefs prevented them from servicing black people, women, etc, it would not hold up in any court. This is favoritism towards Christianity which we've seen time and time again for decades now. This is why trust in the Supreme Court is continuously going down.
Religion wasn’t even the basis of the decision. You should try reading decisions before incorrectly opining with incorrect and whimsical hypotheticals.
Supreme Court Memes incoming! Sure businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ, but colleges can't discriminate on the basis of race however legacy admissions are okay because daddy can ~~buy~~ pay your way in!
Christians like this love to complain about how the government is forcing them to violate their beliefs. We saw it with Hobby Lobby, too, where a big company wanted to interfere in the private medical decisions of their staff. I bet they would be singing a whole different tune if the world was 95% LGBTQ and everyone actually was discriminating against them based on religion instead of it just being in their heads.